The Things We Do For Love
by padfoot's prose
Summary: After watching Lily's violent massacre of her quill in an effort to maim her Transfiguration book, James must overcome his terror of dealing with his exhausted and stressed girlfriend to help her through this lapse in sanity. L/J fluff


**So there I was, sitting at my desk, going over maths notes, and imagine my surprise when this little scene just popped into my head - POP! (just like that). And, honestly, I TRIED to keep working. I TRIED to keep myself interested in Trig graphs and trig identities and t-values. But my mind just refused to stay there until I'd jotted this down.**

**So, sorry in advance if this is a bit rough. There were lots more things I'd love to have included in this, because there are just so many things to talk about in the area of 'reasons why your final year of high school is a living hell', but I unfortunately didn't have time to slot them in and frankly can't be bothered to come back and improve this later.**

**So, here it is. Enjoy!

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**"Urgh! I HATE Transfiguration!"

Lily's yell rang out in the silent library, followed by the sound of her throwing a large textbook to the floor and hitting it several times with her quill, until the cheap pigeon feather was utterly demolished into a small pile of fluffy fragments, littering the guilty textbook.

Unable to prevent the feather's massacre before it had occurred, James resisted a sigh of relief at having stolen Lily's expensive eager-feather quill only a minute or so ago, when he'd first detected the signs of an approaching tantrum. The eagle quill had been a Valentine's Day present to her from him, and was coincidentally also a gift to celebrate their four-month anniversary, so he was rather eager to save it from its comrade's unfortunate fate. Yet, guessing that relief on his part was not the particular emotion Lily wanted to see, he quickly arranged his features into a concerned expression before rounding the last shelf of books and taking his place at Lily's side, wrapping a consoling arm around her shoulders.

"It's okay," he assured her, trying to make his exertions to pull her off the floor and back up onto her chair seem effortless to the many watching eyes. "Shh, shh, don't worry about it, Lily. You can get back to that work later if you can't get it right now."

Submitting to his will, Lily allowed herself to be pulled up off the floor and into her recently vacated seat, flopping forward to rest her head on the table the moment it was possible. James' arm immediately accommodated to this change, and his hand moved up to pat her hair consolingly.

Larely, it hadn't been an unusual occurrence for the Hogwarts 7th years to have similar outbursts. These events were, of course, most common on a Sunday night, after a weekend of frivolity and insistence that 'Monday is AGES away' came to an abrupt and uncomfortable end. The 7th years weren't alone in this desperate dash to finish off work and assignments by the Monday deadline, but as is often the case, the older they got, the more important their work seemed to be, and the more urgently (and often stressfully) it needed to be done. In fact, it was quite common for the elder students to aim their angry outbursts at the younger students who dared to so much as sit at _their_ table or stand in front of _their_ bookshelf (because, of course, everything in the library rightfully belonged to the 7th years).

Yet, despite all this, James had been quite shcoked at the ferocity of Lily's outburst, and was very concerned when, after a few minutes of muted hair-stroking, she still hadn't surfaced from the desk. For a terrifying moment, James entertained the idea that Lily had gone and suffocated herself, permanently removing herself from this intolerably difficult world. Fortunately, that moment passed as the redhead slowly raised herself from the desk, engaging in the opposite extreme of leaning as far back as her chair would allow, her head lolling and her eyes wide and bleary.

"Are you all right?" James ventured, pulling out the seat beside Lily's once he was sure she was sitting up for good.

Silently, Lily nodded. Then, after a second, shook her head.

"Is that a no?"

"Yes."

"As in, 'yes it's a no' or as in, 'no, it's a yes'?"

Lily, with an effort, hoisted her head up and turned to look at James with an expression that very clearly said she had no desire to tolerate these sorts of games.

"I have no desire to tolerate these sorts of games, James," she told him.

He nodded. "Right, sorry. So, if you're not okay, how can I help?"

The offer was so simple and sincere, that Lily thought it would reduce her to tears. How she had managed to be quite so lucky as to start dating James Potter just when his maturity and kindness reached their peak, she had no idea. Seeing his hazel eyes, looking at her with such adoration that she could have asked for an island in the Caribbean at that moment and he probably would have found her one, made her realise, in one of those startling jolts that only come every os often, just how fortunate she was. Overwhelmed by gratitude, exhaustion and maybe even a little bit of what might have been love, it was only once her eyes had begun prickling that Lily understood the utter absurdity of such a response, and hastily tried to prevent it from manifesting as anything visible to James.

"Thanks," she said sincerely, "but I really don't think there's anything you can do."

"Well," began James, "what are you having trouble with, because I might be able to help. I'm not completely useless, you know."

He said the last bit as he rose from his seat and stepped around Lily's chair. Bending to pick up the discarded book, pull his wand from his pocket, charm the quill debris away and sit back down, he then placed the Transfiguration text on the table before him.

"Transfiguration." He stated. "Your new nemesis."

"What's my old nemesis?" Lily asked, happy to be distracted.

James looked up at her, his expression slightly offended – "Me!"

"Oh… right. I forgot about you."

Rolling his eyes, James turned back to the book, opening it and reading down the contents to find the page of the topic they were up to. Lily was quiet as he turned to the right page, pushed the book across the table to lie in front of her, and waited for her to respond.

"I just hate Transfiguration," Lily whined, leaning away from the book as if it had dragon pox.

"I don't think they let you write that instead of an answer on you NEWT paper."

"I know. And I know I have to learn it, and I know the best way to learn it is to practice, and I know I should pay more attention in class-"

"You don't pay attention in class?" James' tone was disbelieving. He'd always been under the impression that Lily paid her full attention to every teacher in every lesson – she able to stay awake in Binn's class for Merlin's sake! – so why was she not paying attention in Transfiguration?

For some unfathomable reason, Lily blushed, and then muttered, "I get distracted."

"By what? The highly attractive, dark-haired man who sits a row in front of you?"

Lily turned a deeper shade of red, and didn't answer.

Enjoying a moment to bask in the fact that his girlfriend was distratced by him in Transfiguration class, James waited a minute before looking back to the book, sensing that Lily wasn't in the mood to be teased right now.

"So what do you have trouble with then, if you know everything you're supposed to be doing?"

Lily sighed, "I don't know why Transfiguration's so difficult for me. It just is! And no matter what I do, I can't get better at it. No matter how many extra questions I ask for, how much extra reading I do, how thoroughly I go over everything even after we've done it in class. Transfiguration just doesn't seem to stick in my head like other subjects do."

"Hmm. I don't know if I can help with that."

"You can't. It's just a problem I have to deal with. I don't like subjects that I'm bad at, which makes me worse at them, which makes me dislike them more – it's a vicious cycle. In fact, I don't like things that I'm bad at, full stop."

"Are you honestly saying that everything you're bad at you automatically hate?"

"Yep, I think so."

"Wow... sex must be terrible for you."

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**That final line is in fact what I had in mind when I started writing this. In my head, there is a whole other scene that takes place in the next few mintues, but I really don't have the time or inclination to write it right now. Maybe later I'll come back to this and add a little more.**

**Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that little snippet. And don't forget to review on the way out!  
**


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